A TASTE OF THE UNITY OF LIFE

Eruch Jessawala
THAT'S HOW IS WAS


And that's the way this world is, everything you
see or experience is part of illusion. Now,
illusion means what? Illusion means it's in the
realm of duality. So no matter what you say,
the opposite will also be there. If you have hot,
you also have to have cold. It cannot be helped,
there is no way out of it, because that's the
nature of duality, of illusion. But the truth, the
whole truth, is beyond duality. And that is why
Baba stressed love. Because love is the
experience of unity in the midst of duality. Do
you know that quote of Muhammad's I like to
say, are you familiar with it? "Harmony is the
imprint of oneness upon multiplicity." Baba
once said we should strive for union or real
harmony, which is union in diversity.

As long as we try to understand things with our
minds, we are dealing in the realm of duality.
But when the heart experiences love, we get a
taste of the unity of life. Perhaps that is why
Baba said understanding has no meaning and
love does have meaning. But then you raise the
question of obedience because Baba said
obedience has most meaning. But what was that
obedience Baba wanted? It was to love Him as
He should be loved. So to obey Baba is our
attempt to love Him. This is the difference
between the two. Real love implies obedience,
obedience is part and parcel of it. When your
beloved asks you for a favor, do you refuse? Of
course not. In fact, when you love someone, you
do not even wait for the Beloved to ask, but you
anticipate their needs and see to it first. That is
what I mean when I say love implies obedience.

One of My Favorite Books

This book for some reason has been so very helpfull and enjoyable for me to read.
I find I read it often.

I hope you might enjoy it too.

John

For the western mind, India has long been a symbol of the incomprehensibility of the East. Listen, Humanity takes the reader into the very heart of the life of India and, through the sympathetic interpretation of a Western businessman’s mind, describes a series of meetings between Avatar Meher Baba and His followers. Part I recreates the lines and atmosphere of these meetings, immersing the reader in the delicate balance of humor and pathos, activity and quiet that was achieved. From it one emerges with the sense that the heartbeat of the devout Orient is powered by the same mainspring that drives the creative mechanism of the West.
Part II of this volume sets forth the enduring philosophy of life and death, sleep and waking, war and peace, slavery and freedom that Meher Baba clarifies in simple terms for all of us today. In it, life is described as the continuing reality, and death as the interlude. Living takes on a healthy color by being suffused with meaning and progressive development, and the ultimate goal is described in words that provide assured direction to the often wandering course of humanity’s aspirations.
The final part of Listen, Humanity is devoted to the challenges involved in the deep relationship between master and devotee. How does the pupil determine for himself that this is the path that he must tread, and this is the man in whose hands he should put the guide-reins of his life? These are not judgments that come easily. They are the intensified counterpart of what we must assess when we choose our profession, our life-mate, or the enterprise in which we hope to pass our life.
Nowadays the great messiahs and saints of the past seem hazy at best. Often it is suspected that they may even have been the product of imagination and exaggeration. Is it possible to produce in this advanced age of rational enlightenment, figures who have authentically the characteristics attributed to the teachers of almost forgotten centuries?
The final pages of Listen, Humanity are an absorbing discussion of this subject, filtered through the appraising mind of an American businessman, reared in the tenets of science and shaped in the exacting demand of competitive enterprise. Listen, Humanity offers the Western world a unique insight into the most intimate phases of the creative religious life of the Easterner. To the Oriental, the present volume offers a concise presentation on the philosophy of perhaps its greatest living clarifier of our function in God’s pattern. To all, it presents the absorbing story of humankind at close grips with the mightiest challenge of all—the Self.